


of spells and enchantments

by framboise



Series: A Westerosi Halloween [7]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Dorne, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Halloween, Older Man/Younger Woman, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-10 04:35:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12291378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: Eight years after Prince Oberyn married Sansa to save her from a betrothal to the boy king who would wreak such terror on King's Landing before his death, she watches the girls of Dorne perform the same spells on All Hallows' Eve as she once did, and thinks back on the dreams of her youth.





	of spells and enchantments

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series of Halloween-themed multipairing stories
> 
> and if you want visuals for this fic I made a graphic [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/166987683552/eight-years-after-prince-oberyn-married-sansa-to)

 

 

On All Hallows' Eve in Dorne, Sansa strolls along the balcony of the Old Palace, silks sweeping against her legs, arms bare to the warm night air, and watches the girls of the palace play in the courtyard below as the sun dips under the horizon, setting the sky ablaze.

The girls - royalty, bastards and servants alike - are doing spells and rituals, taking advantage of tonight's thinning of the barriers betwixt this world and the world of the spirits. In Winterfell, the girls used to throw apple peels behind their left shoulders with their eyes closed, at the Hour of the Ghost, in order to discover through the shape of the peel the first letter of the name of their future husband. Here in Dorne, the ritual is exactly the same except lemon peels are used; and prettier, deadlier, knives are employed by the girls to peel the skin from their fruits. Sansa watches their deft hands, the flash of the knife, and the laughter as each girl throws the fruit peel behind them, while a giddy crowd watches and shouts out each letter.

Only two of the girls she calls step-children are still young enough to play a game like this, but they are away with their mother in Hellholt. Sansa's husband is away too, on a diplomatic trip, but she was feeling too unwell in all this heat to join him, still unused to it after eight years.

 _Eight years_ since she travelled here from Winterfell, and she is twenty one now, in only a few more years she will have spent half her life here and after that her childhood years will retreat to a smaller and smaller portion of her life.

How she had _cried_ when she learned about the betrothal to the formidable, and much older, prince of Dorne, from a land of heat and lust and strange customs; how she had begged her father that she might be able to marry sweet prince Joffrey instead. She shudders at the thought now, fearful for little Sansa Stark who would have entered the lion's den blithely and unprepared.

Her mother and septa had not described Dorne kindly. Why would they? No match between the Starks and Dorne would ever be expected. Neither men nor women were faithful in Dorne, they had told her; and both sexes wore thin, indecent clothing and caroused with all and sundry. Bastards were welcomed by families in Dorne, her mother had said, the disapproval clear.

And Sansa was so young then, only thirteen, too young to get married she had told her mother, who agreed, but said that she was not too young to be betrothed, and to go and live as a ward with the family of her husband-to-be and learn the ways of her new home.

"I don't want a new home," she had spat out, and then ran and hid in the branches of the heart tree, as if she were Arya or Bran, and not the eldest daughter and a lady as she had always professed to be.

It had been Jon who had found her and coaxed her down.

"I know you are sad," he said, "but they are doing the right thing in marrying you to Prince Oberyn. And he's a good man, an honourable man," Jon had said, hugging her tearful form to him.

"But he's so _old_ ," she had said. "As old as father. And he's not a knight or the crown prince."

"He's still a prince," he had said, "and very wealthy. They say he is Sunspear's favourite son."

"What have I done wrong to be banished there?" she had asked in a small voice. "I have only tried to be good."

"It is not a punishment, Sansa. Your father and mother have discovered that Joffrey would not be a true husband to you," he had pulled back and brushed her tears away. "You know how close the king is to your father, he would not threaten that friendship unless he had just cause to."

"Maybe they heard lies, and believed them truths," she had argued.

"Do you really think so?"

"I don't know," she had said, sniffing.

"Your mother thought she was to be married to a different man before she married your father, did she not? And she has found the greatest of happiness." Jon had looked sad as he said this and she had thought it was because he was going to join the Night's Watch, since the men there could never marry, she had not paid enough attention then to the ways his bastardy had hurt him.

"You found her!" Robb had called out, running closer and squeezing her in a tight hug.

"I don't want to marry Prince Oberyn, Robb," she had said, starting to cry again.

"He'll be good to you, I promise, else Jon and I will travel to Dorne and hold the point of our swords at his throat."

"You promise?"

"I swear it by the heart tree."

"Aye, and me too," Jon had said, and Sansa remembers smiling a small smile in response.

The marriage contract negotiations had taken place by raven a few moons before Prince Oberyn would set off from Dorne to collect her. But Sansa was not invited to be a part of them, to make suggestions, because it was understood that her parents would put her own interests first. An idea that she scoffed at privately at the time - for it was surely not in her _interest_ to marry an old, licentious man.

It had been her uncle Benjen, a strange and practical man, who had told her before she left Winterfell of the prince's bastards and of the different customs of lovers in Dorne, and she must give great thanks to him, even though the knowledge had hurt her and made her even more apprehensive about journeying to her husband's country. Her mother, it seemed, had wished to send her off to Dorne without preparing her - as if, if she were not told, then the things her mother disapproved of would not exist; or in a kind of petulance, Sansa thinks now, against her father who would send their eldest daughter so far away and give her to such a man. Her mother has still not visited her in Dorne, even though almost every other family member has. Her mother has had to see the man she scorned as her husband's bastard son become king.

Sudden shouts from another courtyard in Sunspear draw Sansa away from her memories and make her hurry inside and out onto the opposite balcony. Her husband has arrived home.

She watches him ride in, firm in his seat, his thighs straining at his breeches; and she shivers pleasantly. She remembers the first time she had seen him, on his horse arriving at Winterfell. Tall and dark, wearing a wicked smile and a fur coat with its trim dyed a dazzling orange to match the silks he wore underneath. She had stood in the courtyard of Winterfell, trying to remind herself to be brave like her lady mother, whilst her legs were shaking in fear and, she realises now, a kind of awe, at this foreign prince looking like something from a mysterious song.

She had been a girl then, with girlish dreams of soft blonde men with the hairless faces of youths. She did not know what to do with a grown man's sensuality, with the _Red Viper_ , infamous seducer and lover.

But what a man to have for all her firsts, she thinks now, not a little smugly. A first kiss, a first embrace, the first time he slipped his hand underneath her skirts, the first time he placed his mouth over the tip of her breast, between her legs; a first bedding.

Yet all this was years away for the young girl who travelled here, for he did not touch her beyond kisses until she was much older, until she thought she might _die_ if he didn't touch her.

The moment she had arrived in Dorne he had taken the place of all her other dream lovers, even as she told herself that the shadowy figure of her daydreams was someone else, even as she wept at night and wished she could have married the crown prince and lived at King's Landing instead.

She thinks now that her parents were shocked too by his arrival that day on horseback, that it was all very well to think about a suitor described in ravens and very different to see him striding into the courtyard in the flesh. She remembers that her parents' words of welcome were very stilted, and that her mother had looked quite faint.

Oberyn had kissed her on the hand when he had greeted her and said that Lady looked very becoming in her ribbon collar. Then he had brought out a present for her, knowing as a father that gifts were a well-trodden route to the good graces of a maiden girl, a golden necklace with a fiery opal on its end. Sansa had felt her eyes widen at its beauty and had dipped into a curtsey in thanks.

These last few years she has finally persuaded Oberyn that she does not require gifts every time he returns home from travels, that it is his company she wishes for most of all.

Oberyn spots her watching him on the balcony now and his eyes pierce hers before he stalks away to come and find her. She waits for him, just as breathless as she had been the night of her wedding, aching for him.

"My love," he says, appearing in the doorway of their solar, striding closer and then catching her in a kiss as she flings her arms around his neck. He smells of horse, and sand, and sweat, and she feels her belly tremble.

He carries her into their bedroom and barely separates from her to set her down on their bed before he tears her clothes off her as she scrabbles with the laces of his own.

Later, as the sweat dries and they sit on a balcony drinking wine and wearing the flimsy clothes they wear in private, he asks after her day.

"I was watching the girls perform a ritual for All Hallows' Eve," she says.

"Of what sort?"

"Why the sort to find out about their future husbands of course, the only reason for maids to do such spells and rituals," she teases.

He kisses her again, deep drugging kisses.

"Did you perform these rituals at Winterfell?" he asks, moving his head back so she can breathe.

"I did, but they never worked," she shakes her head and then stops and gasps, realising something.

"What?" he asks, smirking.

"We used to throw the peel of an apple behind our shoulders with our eyes closed and then find the first initial of our future husband in its shape," she says, "and whenever I did it the peel lay just as I had carved it from the apple - in a perfect circle. In an 'O'!" she says, laughing.

"So the fates knew even then," he says, smugly, "that you would be mine."

"And you mine," she says, pointedly.

"Do you doubt my fidelity?" he asks, mock-fiercely.

"Never, my love, never."

He is such a proud peacock sometimes and it makes her laugh on occasion to remember the feats of bravery and devotion that he has performed to prove his love for her - even though by the time they were married she had needed no more proof.

"Do you remember our first meeting?" she says, running her hand up and down his arm.

"I do. You were such a prim and proper thing then," he says and she frowns playfully. "A little beauty who showed her emotions only too well on her face. You were horrified with me," he says, and laughs.

"I was not!"

"Yes you were, I was old and weathered. I was no young knight," he says, and purses his face into an impression of just such a prim boy.

After that first week at Winterfell, where she had sat next to him at feasts and fumbled with her spoon and knife, colouring both at the shame of being clumsy and at the heat of his body next to hers, she had journeyed down to White Harbor accompanied by her parents, and said a tearful goodbye to them in the cabin that had been set aside for her.

Her mother had told her to make her family proud, and her father had told her to be happy. She had cried the moment they had left, bawling into the shoulder of Jeyne who did her best to comfort her.

Oberyn had told her later that he had wished that Ellaria had come with him to meet her, that her motherly touch would have helped soothe her, or Tyene who would have been kind to her, seeing her for what she was - a scared young girl, and not the woman come to usurp her mother. But he could bring neither, since it would have been deeply offensive for his paramour and bastard daughter to meet the Starks.

Sansa had cried most nights of their journey, and gotten seasick too, had believed in her feverish state that she was surely on a journey to hell. She had prayed to her mother's gods and her father's gods for help, to relieve her of her betrothal. Help that she is now relieved they did not give.

There were so many shocks to her those first few moons in Dorne, which she tried to bear with polite grace and good manners, even though she knows now that her face had given her away many times. She sees now how kind everyone was to her too, how understanding.

The heat in Dorne had quickly burned through her insistence on wearing only northern fashions and she soon gladly stored her old dresses in her chests and covered her limbs in lighter silks. It took almost a year before she had attuned her tongue to the spices of Dorne however, even though she tried to hide her reaction and brush away the tears the heat caused.

Oberyn had found her shock, and occasional childhood petulance, adorable, he had once said, and only rarely irritating. A comment which caused her to huff and pretend to walk away from him only so that he would chase her and grab her and carry her to their bed.

In their private rooms Sansa is not as ladylike as she had once imagined she would be as a woman, as a mother, she sees more of Arya and her brothers in her now than she did then. The heat has softened her perfect manners, the raucous company too, and the terrible influence of Oberyn, she sometimes tells him, and then he acts appalled and asks the babe in his arms, _am I a terrible influence, am I?_ and they babble in answer and her heart melts.

"Were there any other All Hallows' Eve rituals?" Oberyn asks her, as they eat fruits from a loaded platter a servant has brought.

She nods. "There was one in which we were blindfolded and grabbed at ears of wheat to count how many grains we had grasped, and thus how many children we would have. I always had too many grains to count," she says wryly, and watches a pleased smile cross his face.

He reaches over and places a hand on the swelling starting show on her stomach. "And how is my newest daughter? I hope she is behaving for her mother," he says, looking fond.

"Another daughter, not another son?" she teases, pressing her hand on top of his.

"One son is surely enough for a man," he says, "and I must have daughters as beautiful as you are, we must keep trying until we have a daughter with your hair," he says.

As if he needs another excuse to get her with child, she thinks and smiles to herself.

Their love-making had been passionate since the beginning, almost overwhelming to her, but when, after a year of moon tea, he had told her that she was old enough now to bear children safely should she wish, and she had full-heartedly agreed, she had seen a new intensity to him.

She had discussed it once with Ellaria, who mentioned that he was the same with her, that he loved all parts of being a father, that waiting six years to put another child in a woman's belly had been almost unbearable for him, _the poor thing_ , and then both women had laughed good-naturedly and thus had Oberyn found them - his ex-lover and his current lover, two mothers of his children - and inquired as to the jape, which only set them into greater peals of laughter while he watched, bemused and fond.

That first night with the knowledge that there would be no moon tea in the morning he had finished inside of her quicker than he ever had, and before she could reach her own peak, and then he had laid beside her looking shocked and drained as she giggled to herself; before he got a second surge of energy and took her again.

 _Let me put a babe in you, Sansa, let me fill you with my seed_ , he would murmur to her, and she would always reply, _yes, yes_ , embarrassed and yet squirming with want.

 _Let me put two babes in you, twins_ , he sometimes said, _and then more, let me see your teats bloom and your cunt swell, your womb grow so large I have to carry you everywhere_.

( _You won't actually have to carry me, will you? Your babes aren't that large?_ she had asked the first time he said this, as they lay panting in the aftermath, feeling slightly concerned.

 _No, my love, my mouth runs away from me in bed, I know that I say foolish things sometimes_ , he had replied, uncharacteristically embarrassed.)

 _I can't wait to see you_ , he would grunt, _fat with my babe, like The Mother, lush and ripe_.

The Mother? she would think later, staring at her reflection in her mirror as she was dressed for dinner, embarrassed herself by the way his passion seemed to spur her to peak ever faster and greater, but not willing to bring it up with him, for fear of embarrassing them both further.

If she had thought his desire for her would cease once he knew she was indeed with his child, she was quite mistaken, for he seemed to only hunger for her more, which suited well the moons in the middle of her pregnancy when she was ravenous for him, and less the later moons when she was fat and uncomfortable in the Dornish heat and she made him bathe her and feed her fruit instead of allowing him to lay with her - although truly he seemed to take just as much pleasure in pampering her.

Her life had thrown up one more surprise when the first babe she gave birth to was a boy, not the girl she had assumed she would bear after meeting Oberyn's eight other daughters.

"A son," the old maidservant who helped with the birth had said, her voice thick with some kind of emotion.

"A son," Oberyn had repeated, and taken the precious bundle into his arms, looking bemused and awestruck. "I would have been happy with a daughter, I know how to raise a daughter. But a son-" he shook his head, and laughed joyfully and then handed the babe back to Sansa to suck at her breast.

The next babe had been a girl, and she thinks this one shall be too. That it is likely she will have a whole brood of daughters for him, just as the grains of wheat had foreseen. She smiles, and strokes her stomach.

"Were there any secret rituals you performed?" he asks her later, after they have lain together again and he is watching her brush her long hair in front of the mirror, as the sea breeze flows through the shutters of their room.

"There was one I wished to try, but I was too afraid."

"Oh?" he asks, leaning forward on the bed.

"Some of the other girls looked into a mirror at midnight on All Hallows' Eve with a candle to see their husband in the reflection behind them.

"Midnight, you say?" he tilts his head, "It is nearabouts thus." He gets up from the bed and stalks closer and she feels her breath catch, her belly tremble. "Well, my love, are you happy with your husband-to-be?" he murmurs, eyes dark as she meets his in the mirror, as he slips her shift from her shoulders.

"Yes," she says, "Yes," as he turns her around and kisses her deeply.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please comment, I'd love to hear what people think!
> 
> also, I know the backstory for this fic could be novel length itself but I was running out of time and wanted to finish this before Halloween.
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://framboise-fics)
> 
> and there's a rebloggable photoset for this fic [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/166987683552/eight-years-after-prince-oberyn-married-sansa-to)


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